A NO-CLUTTER HANDMADE GIFT GUIDE

+ your favorite substack writers reveal what they’re gifting this year!

Nov 18, 2025

Today’s post is free thanks to our sponsor Social Flowers!

Look, I love trinkets. I have shelves in my room, and space on my desk, and even a corner of my bedside table dedicated to useless-but-beautiful things. I fully support owning objects that serve no real “purpose” other than making you happy.

But when it comes to gifting to others? I hate imagining my gift turning into yet another piece of clutter collecting dust in someone’s house. I love homemade gifts—both giving and receiving them—but let’s be honest: a lot of them end up as…junk. They take up space on someone’s desk until they’re forced to throw it away to make room for the next round of clutter. I think it’s wonderful to take the effort to make something beautiful for someone, which is why I think we should also make an effort to ensure it’s something they’ll use long after the holidays.

So I thought I would put together a gift guide of things that are handmade, personal, pretty, and actually useful. Along with these ideas, I also asked some Substack creators to share their own gift ideas, wishlists, and thoughts on the season. Enjoy!

Altoid tin “mini-kit”

These are my favorite low-effort, high-delight gifts! They’re perfect for coworkers, classmates, or anyone else you like enough to give something cute to, but maybe not enough to spend $50 on. It’s so cute in how tiny and self-contained it is, like giving someone a pocket-sized piece of you to carry around!

Here are some themed ideas I really love—

☐ sewing kit: thimble, scissors, needles, buttons, fabric, safety pins, thread, seam ripper

☐ painting kit: swatches, pencils, brushes, pencil sharpener, sponge

☐ makeup kit: chapstick/lipgloss, liquid blush, lip liner, perfume samples, a little mirror, mini tweezers

☐ night-out repair kit: blister patches, bandaids, nail file, eyedrops, mints, makeup wipes, hair ties/bobby pins

☐ readers essentials kit: colorful sticky tabs, clear sticky notes, mini pencil, mini notepad, highlighter, corner bookmark

A box of hand-written recipes

My favorite part of getting a new cookbook is being able to turn it into an intentional, lived-in object. I get to check off recipes as I go, scribble notes or substitutions in the margins, circle the ones I swear I’ll make “next week.” Gifts like this feel especially personal and unique in our post-analog world today, where most of the recipes we use live forever in tabs online.

Here are some of my favorite dessert recipes that I would include in this gift (and recommend for everyone to try!):

☐ lemon olive oil cake

☐ fig cake with almond and honey

☐ chai cake (if you like chai, you have to make this, trust me!)

☐ traditional bakewell tart

☐ orange cranberry scones

And some nice vintage boxes to put them in: link link link

A mini-cookbook is also a fun alternative if you know something who would appreciate something a little more involved than recipe cards. It gives you more room to add personalizations—photos of the dish, stickers, substitutions, special tips you learned the hard way. I think it’s especially fun to treat it almost like a magazine or scrapbook! Almost like a mix of recipes, collages, commentary, and whatever little surprises you want to leave for when they flip to a certain page.

A homemade candle

It’s actually crazy how the moment the weather starts to cool down even a little bit, something primitive in me wakes up and forces me to start hunting for candles. As a recovering(?) over-consumer, I can’t tell you the amount of money I’ve wasted on buying candles before realizing how easy they are to make myself! And you can personalize so much of the process, too—from the specific scent, to the wick, to the cute container! It scratches the same itch as shopping, except you end up with something personal instead of another $32 candle that doesn’t even burn all the way to the edges.

here are some unique fragrance ideas:

☐ bourbon and butterscotch
☐ sea salt
☐ coconut and beeswax
☐ vanilla almond
☐ brown sugar and fig
☐ honey lemon

and here are some interesting vintage/second-hand containers to put them in: link link link link link link + seashells + vintage teacups

Crafts to make with flowers!

Call me basic, but I love flowers! The easiest way to make my home feel more intentional as the seasons change is by buying flowers specifically for that moment. One bouquet on the windowsill can change the entire mood of your home. Flowers are also the best gift for online creators you want to show appreciation for! When you aren’t quite sure what’s on their wishlist, flowers are truly the best option.

Which is where Social Flowers comes in! They’re a flower delivery service that allows you to send flowers using just an email or social media profile, with no need to give out your address. Consent is an especially important aspect of this, as the recipient must give their permission before the flowers can be delivered.

As someone who creates content online for a living, it’s easy for the relationship between readers to feel transactional or impersonal. But FlowerMe lets me create a profile and flower wishlist so readers can send me something that feels more human than a simple message online.

And one of the best parts of receiving flowers is that you can continue to find uses for them long after the blooms fade! Here are some DIY gifts you can make with your flowers or gift to others:

☐ a pressed flower book (+ how to bind the book yourself)

☐ pressed flower bookmarks

☐ pressed flower candles

☐ dried flower tea bags

☐ floral simple syrups

Chainmail pouch

This one’s for my subscribers who are single-handedly keeping the medieval revival going! If you’re up for a gift that truly takes time and effort, a homemade chainmail pouch is such a satisfying project. I think it’s definitely going to be difficult when you’re just getting started, but it’s something that will only get better as you keep practicing!

Here’s a tutorial for the classic 4 in 1 weave that makes up most chainmail items, and here’s a tutorial for making the pouch itself. You can attach it to your bag and turn it into a mini pocket for essentials like chapstick, headphones, jewelry, a perfume vial, a lighter, and more!

Or chainmail anything!

Once you get the hang of chainmail, the opportunities are really endless, especially in terms of jewelry/accessories. Here are some ideas for small, simple things to gift—

☐ chainmail earrings

☐ chainmail bracelet

☐ chainmail keychains

☐ chainmail (hair)pins

Personalized playing cards

I can guarantee that at least one of your friends is out there playing card games with the same ragged deck they’ve had since high school. My friends and I were once so desperate to play Spoons that we resorted to using Uno cards (don’t ask how we made that worked). But instead of giving someone a boring old deck from a boring old store, you can make something far more charming and personal!

There’s lots of fun options for this one—

☐ use cut outs from magazines or stickers to make a collage deck
☐ if you’re more artistically inclined, you can paint/draw the images yourself
☐ pictures of you and the recipient
☐ pressed flowers!
☐ put a line from a quote or poem for them to read while playing

Some honorable mentions:

☐ repair/fix something they love that has become a bit strained from over-use! (mend their favorite sweater, reattach missing buttons, sew up holes, etc.)

☐ homemade beeswax wraps

☐ homemade granola (my favorite recipe to follow is from tess madalyn on tiktok!)

☐ a custom reading/film guide based on their personal taste (almost like a media advent calendar!)

☐ a batch of homemade cleaning cloths (cut + hemmed from old cotton or linen)

And the most important part of gift-gifting: pretty and personalized gift wrapping!

Now, a few of my favorite Substack writers are going to share their gift ideas, wishlists, musings, and much more! Though giving and receiving gifts is fun, the warmth of the holiday season also comes from connecting with others—even if it’s thousands of miles away and through a digital newsletter!

Zoe Duncan, writer of zombie grrrl zine

To me, the holiday season is about keeping warm, both in body and soul. Once it starts getting dark by 5pm, I indulge in my evening routine of bundling up with a mug of hot apple cider, a comfort meal, and a Christmas-adjacent movie (the 1994 Little Women is my go-to). Winter, historically, has been a challenging time for humans. I am very lucky to be able to indulge in my little winter rituals, but I also look towards a variety of wintery/Christmasy traditions developed in darker times.

In the medieval period, people staved off the cold and dreadful season with a variety of festivities and traditions. Huge midwinter feasts would have been a means to gather, celebrate, and keep warm and full. Many midwinter celebrations stemmed from various pre-Christian sun-worshipping practices. “Yule,” and “Saturnalia,” for instance, celebrated the Celtic and Roman sun gods, respectively. It seems to me that when the days are shortest and coldest, we tend to appreciate the sun more.

Christmas may have looked different in those days, but that doesn’t mean we can’t implement some of these traditions into our own holidays. I find that the holiday season is a time for slowing down, for thinking about the past and appreciating where we are in the present.

One way that I like to spend my time in the winter is making things for the people I care about. I love putting together homemade garlands. The origin of drying oranges and hanging them as garlands in the winter is contested—one poem from 1823 indicates that people were putting oranges in their stockings as a reference to St. Nicholas’ “miracle of the dowries,” in which he blessed families by tossing gold balls into their homes. Oranges, resembling gold balls, may be a way to invite wealth into one’s home, but oranges themselves were also luxury items in many parts of Europe. I love gifting chocolate oranges or orange garlands to my friends. In the winter, I hang my own orange garland in my room as a way to invite warmth into my home.

I also love the idea of gifting people homemade potpourri, candles, or mead. Mead particularly appeals to me this time of year because of its honeyed taste—it has a rich and warm flavor that I think could make for a fun addition to your christmas feast. I tend to gift things that invite warmth and restfulness in the wintertime. Candles, homemade treats, teas, wine…the list goes on. All things that invite comfort, warmth, and serenity into these shorter and darker days.

One of my friends hosts parties with the most elaborate and beautiful charcuterie boards I’ve ever seen, so I always associate this time of year with being around friends, eating good food, and spending time on things that show how much you care about the people around you. I would ask for an endless supply of those cheeseboards if I could, but for now, I’ll satisfy myself by making my own version for people who come to hang out. I am always on the lookout for any kind of artisan charcuterie slab to gift my friend who puts them together.

One of my favorite parts of gift giving is the presentation. Sometimes, I like to re-use paper bags from the grocery store as wrapping paper. You can draw on the blank brown canvas or decorate the package with ribbons as you please. If you have the tools, homemade litho stamp designs on wrapping paper can add a really fun and personal touch. If you don’t have the tools for litho printing, you can chop up potatoes and use them as stamps with paint and ink to create patterns on your wrapping paper. I also always make hand designed cards for my friends based on their personalities, with special sappy musings on our friendship written inside.

As for my own wishlist, this year I am trying to keep it simple. I am trying to not accumulate too much stuff, so I am asking only for things I find will be of particular use to me. First on my list is lots and lots of books. I’ve heard great things about “Between Two Fires” by Christopher Buchlman. I’ve been meaning to read “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck, and I’m also going to ask for some Ursula K. Le Guin books to add to my collection. I would also love to find a signature perfume. I’m drawn to fragrances based on their packaging, so anything that looks like it could be found in a medieval apothecary or in a witch’s cabinet is on my list.

A particularly weird item I’m asking for is a lute: a medieval stringed instrument. I was at a Ren Faire this year, and a troupe of musicians were performing. One had a lute that was adapted like a guitar. Since I’ve taught myself guitar, I figured I could teach myself the lute. It will be a project to take on in the New Year!

I always love receiving flowers. In 14th century Turkey, people engaged in the tradition of sélam, the practice of gifting flowers to send specific messages back and forth. We see this idea in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” as Ophelia hands around flowers to the court, each meaning something about the recipient. During the Victorian era, people became interested in the “language of flowers,” and the “Dictionnaire du language des fleurs” was published in 1809 as a catalogue of the meaning of flowers.

Hawthorns, according to the Victorians, symbolize hope—a good sentiment to bring into the new year. In medieval, and even pre-medieval Celtic traditions, hawthorn and rowan boughs were placed above lintels on solstices to invite positive energy into the home. Foxglove, in the medieval period, was believed to house fairies within their bell-shaped flowers. I’d love receiving foxglove to invite some magic and whimsy into my life.

Mistletoe and holly are, of course, classic Christmas florals, with their use harkening back to the medieval period, when people used plants and flowers that stayed green into the winter to bring a sense of nature and life into their homes. In druidic cultures, mistletoe was linked to sun worship and also served as a protective charm in the home. Lavender and thyme were associated with Christmas traditions in medieval Valencia. Carrying the herbs in a rotation while singing an “aguinaldo” was meant to symbolize the cycle of the sun.

I would love to receive any of these flowers to brighten up my space in the dark winter time, or to dry and hang them in my room. I also love arranging and gifting flowers to others. Flower presses or dried flowers are great ways to make flowers a timeless gift, and imbuing meaning into the flowers you chose to give your loved ones can make the gift extra special.

Again, winter is a time for rest and reflection. It is a time to clean your space and invite positive energies into the new year. I find that by revisiting old traditions lost to time, the winter becomes less dreary and more magical.

Anastasia Krogh, writer of a twenties pov

The art of gift giving has always seemed entirely personal to me. It reflects an understanding of a person’s presence—a person’s impact. Right now, as my mother is spending the month of November travelling, I have ensured that fresh flowers are still very much a part of our home by going to the market each weekend. I rationalised the action to my father by telling him, “By keeping up her habits, I’ll feel her absence much less.”

In all honesty, I’ve always embraced the “boring” and “mundane” part of gift giving, as I don’t necessarily see it as a way for a friend to discover something new, but more for them to keep what they already love. Whether it be a good thermal to bring to the office because I know they love a warm drink in the mornings, or several unscented candles for their bedroom because I know they are prone to migraines. Whether it be their favourite high-end product they can’t justify getting right now, or products from their favourite foreign grocery store, I’ve always loved getting and receiving gifts that scream “I’m here, I listen, I see, and I know.”

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this gave you some inspiration for the gifts you’ll be giving this year! I would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve tried any of these gifts out yourself or are planning on making them.